At any rate, that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.”
– Willa Cather, My Antonia

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.”
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.”
—Toni Morrison, Beloved

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
—Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“The half life of love is forever.”
—Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her